'Twain' Animation Fine But Stories Don't Move

May 20, 1986|By Jay Boyar, Sentinel Movie Critic

The technical novelty of The Adventures of Mark Twain is the best thing about the movie. Billed as the first feature film to use the process of Claymation extensively, Mark Twain is peopled by clay figures that have been given the illusion of life through the use of stop-motion photography.

If you remember the old Gumby cartoons, you've got the general idea, except that in the new film this unusual animation process is carried off with remarkable variety and ingenuity. Marvels abound, such as the transformation of a pocket watch into a turtle and the liquefaction of a frog as it hops through the air. But as impressive as such magic is, the story that is told is disappointingly limp and fragmented.

Directed by Will Vinton from a script by Susan Shadburne (Vinton's wife), the movie is actually made up of several stories. The framing tale, suggested by Tom Sawyer Abroad, is a bit of hokum about Mark Twain (whose voice is provided by James Whitmore) setting off in an enchanted airship to meet up with Halley's comet.

It seems that the great author was born in 1835, a year that the comet appeared, and intends ''to go out with'' the comet on its 1910 appearance. Along for the ride are three of Twain's most famous characters: Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn and Becky Thatcher (whose voices are provided by Chris Ritchie, Gary Krug and Michele Mariana, respectively).

Every so often, the story of their flight comes to a halt as adaptations of such Twain tales as ''The Mysterious Stranger'' and ''The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County'' are presented. ''The Diary,'' Twain's wry retelling of the Adam and Eve adventures, is also among the adaptations. Apparently, the Claymators

Vinton's considerable talents as an animator of clay have been previously displayed in the Nome King sequence of last summer's Return to Oz and in Vinton's Academy Award-winning short, Closed Mondays (1974). The fact that the stories in the new movie don't fit together well suggests that the animator may not have originally intend to make a feature film at all. Mark Twain plays as if Vinton had initially made a few Twain-related shorts and later got the idea to weave them together.

In any case, the short stories within this movie probably would have been more effective had they been presented individually, on separate occasions. Seen together, they make for a bumpy ride -- and after a half-hour or so, the novelty of Claymation wears off. Another problem with the film is that the stories are rather too depressing and/or sophisticated for young children, the natural audience for an animated feature that's being presented at matinees.

A quote from the New York Daily News calling the film a ''classic'' is being used in the promotional campaign. This doubtless would have amused Twain, whose definition of a classic is a ''book which people praise and don't read.'' Change ''book'' to ''movie'' and ''read'' to ''watch,'' and you've pretty much got The Adventures of Mark Twain in a nutshell. The technical achievements are easier to admire than the movie is to like.